


There Won't Be Any Fucking

by Butterynutjob



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Pizza, Prostitution, not what I usually write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 01:04:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11220021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterynutjob/pseuds/Butterynutjob
Summary: While traveling for business, Erik finds a good-looking man on Craigslist to enjoy for the evening.





	There Won't Be Any Fucking

Erik’s lips tightened at the appearance of the young man—no, the child—who was standing outside his motel room door. 

“You aren’t the person in the ad,” he said flatly. The boy bore a definite similarity to the man whose ad Erik had found on Craigslist, but that man had been more muscled, older; his face slightly more chiseled. The boy standing in front of him was thin, almost too thin, with bags under his eyes. But he had the same piercing blue eyes as the man in the ad.

“Yes I am,” the boy said, lifting his chin defiantly. “I just...edited the pictures a bit.”

A laugh burst out of Erik’s mouth, catching himself by surprise. “A bit?”

The young man pursed his lips ruefully. “Apparently a bit too much,” he admitted. He boldly took two steps forward so he was inside the motel room with Erik. Erik stepped back reflexively. 

“I exaggerated some things,” the boy said, and then the pitch of his voice dropped slightly. “But the text was accurate.” 

The text of the ad had promised filthy things that Erik had been very much looking forward to doing with the man in the ad, but the boy in front of him was not that man. 

“Is your name really Charles?” Erik asked. He was feeling very confused and uncomfortable. 

“Yes,” Charles said, in a low, breathy voice. He took a step closer to Erik. “I’m sorry if you feel—fooled. I can throw in a few, um, extras if you like.”

Erik felt his cheeks flushing. There was a wrongness here; he could feel it. “How old are you?” he asked, turning and walking around to the other side of the bed so it didn’t look so much like he was running away. One of his hands was rubbing his chin and the other was on his hip. 

Charles blinked. “You shouldn’t ask questions you don’t really want the answer to,” he said after a moment. 

Erik fixed Charles with a stare. “I don’t,” he snapped. “How old?”

Charles just stood looking at him with wide eyes for a moment, his chapped lips parted. His eyes flickered down. “Seventeen,” he said in a tremulous voice. 

Erik’s eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline. “Seventeen,” he echoed incredulously. He rubbed his forehead and started pacing. “Jesus Christ. What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to support myself,” Charles mumbled. He was looking down, his cheeks flaming. 

“Support yourself? Where are your parents?” Erik demanded. He paused in his pacing and looked at Charles, waiting for a response. 

Charles crossed his arms across his front and looked away. He didn’t respond for a moment. “Look, I’m sorry the pictures were...misleading. I’m just a couple hundred short for tuition, and I thought—”

“It’s not about the pictures, Jesus,” Erik said. “You’re just a kid. Why are you doing this? Don’t you know what could happen?”

Charles stared at Erik for a moment. He swallowed. “I’d better go,” he whispered. 

“No,” Erik said. His gut was churning as his earlier anticipatory arousal tried to reconcile with the confusion that the boy’s appearance and demeanor has caused. 

Charles lips tightened. “You don’t want to fuck me,” he said. “Why should I stay?”

Some of Erik’s agitation lessened as he recognized the truth of what Charles said. No, he didn’t want to fuck the boy, which was actually deeply relieving to Erik. 

But he didn’t know the answer to Charles’ question. He just looked at him.

Charles shrugged one shoulder in defeat and turned to go. Erik nearly leaped to get to the door before Charles did, which was a feat, because Charles was closer to the door than he was. “Do you like pizza?” Erik blurted.

Charles stopped, seeming confused. “Pizza? Are you—well—I mean yes, doesn’t everyone?”

“Yes, I think so,” Erik said, smiling a little. “Look, if I order us pizza, will you stay a while and just—talk?”

Charles’ brow knitted in confusion. He looked at Erik suspiciously. “I could stay for a bit,” he said cautiously. 

“Great,” Erik said, relieved. “What do you like on your pizza?” 

Charles shrugged. “Anything but onions—or peppers. And I could live without mushrooms. And, well, I don’t like pineapple on pizza, but really, does anyone?”

Erik bit his cheek to keep from laughing. He liked all of those things on pizza, in fact, but didn’t feel it was necessary to tell Charles that. “Well, I can’t have pepperoni, so how about the four-cheese?”

Charles’ stomach growled audibly. “That sounds—wonderful,” he said sincerely. 

Erik called to place the order, watching Charles the whole time. The teenager seemed comfortably out of place, if there was such a thing. He sat cross-legged on the bed, looking around the room. 

“I’d rather not fuck on a full stomach,” Charles said casually when Erik ended the call. “I mean, if you change your mind. Then we should eat after.”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” Erik said evenly. He sat down on the armless office chair backwards, so there was the back of the chair as a barrier between himself and the boy. He needed that, for some reason. 

“Do your parents know where you are?” Erik asked softly. 

Charles snorted, picking at a random thread in the bedspread. “What do you think?”

Erik didn’t respond, and just watched the boy for a moment. Sitting like this, his legs folded and crossed in front of him, his back slouching, he looked even more like a child than he had when Erik had first answered the door. 

“They don’t care,” Charles said after a moment. He looked up at Erik. “They made that very clear when they kicked me out.” Charles’s voice was quiet and steady. This was an old pain, an ache he had been carrying for a long time. 

“I have two daughters,” Erik said suddenly, appropos of nothing. He brought out his cell phone and pulled up some photos to show Charles. “Lorna is nineteen; she just finished her freshman year at college. And this is Wanda. She’ll be a junior next fall.”

Understanding dawned on Charles’ face. “They’re my age,” he said. 

“More or less, yes.” Erik took his phone back and smiled at the picture before tucking his phone in his pocket. “There’s nothing my kids could do that would make me kick them out,” he said. “Well, not at your age. Maybe if Lorna is still living with me when she’s 35, well, we’ll have a talk. But at seventeen…” 

“Your kids aren’t me,” Charles said, too loudly. He coughed a little, embarrassed by his outburst. “I’m not… what they wanted.”

Erik felt again that patience would be the better interrogation technique, so he said nothing while Charles chewed on his lip. “I got straight A’s, I never did drugs, but that doesn’t matter. They can’t have a son who’s queer.”

“Your parents are assholes,” Erik said, in a matter-of-fact voice. “There’s nothing wrong with being queer.”

At the moment the doorbell rang. Erik grabbed his wallet and went to the door. After he had finished the transaction (and had tipped the delivery boy generously), Erik casually said to the him, “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being queer, is there?”

“Hell no,” the pizza guy said. “Have a good evening.”

Charles was smirking when Erik shut the door. “He thinks we’re going to fuck now,” he said, climbing off the bed towards the pizza. “Are you sure we aren’t going to?”

“One hundred percent sure,” Erik said firmly. “Help yourself to as much pizza as you want.”

Charles sighed theatrically but helped himself to three large pieces of pizza. 

“Have you been doing this long?” Erik asked, after they had both eaten some pizza. 

Charles shrugged, not making eye contact. “I’ve had plenty of sex, thought I might as well make some money at it.”

That wasn’t exactly an answer to Erik’s question, but he let it slide. “Do you have a safe place to go?”

“For fucking?” Charles head snapped up and he looked at Erik with a combination of anxiety and anticipation that Erik found disconcerting. 

“No, not for fucking, Jesus. I told you, there won’t be any fucking,” Erik said in exasperation. He remembered what it was like to be seventeen and horny, but to have to do it, for money, was an entirely different thing. “Just—I meant—you’re not homeless, are you?”

Erik could tell by Charles’ reaction that he was. Erik sighed and bit into his pizza as Charles mumbled, “We prefer the term ‘unhoused person.’”

Erik didn’t pick up the second piece of pizza on his plate as his thoughts raced, his brow furrowed. 

“You sure look at me an awful lot for someone who doesn’t want to fuck,” Charles remarked after a minute. He was well into his third slice of pizza. 

“I know,” Erik said. He paused before saying the words in his mind, but thought, the hell with it. “There’s something about you that’s special.”

“My friend, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong,” Charles said, although his voice broke at the end of his statement a bit. 

“You’re in college,” Erik said. It was an educated guess based on Charles’ earlier remark about tuition. “But you are homeless. You are talented enough to edit photographs so that a marketing professional couldn’t tell they were edited. You—”

“Why are you doing this?” Charles blurted out. “If you are not going to fuck me, then I need to be out there fucking someone who will pay, alright?”

“How much do you need?” Erik asked. 

“I mean, the pizza’s great, but if you have some daddy—” Charles paused as Erik’s words sank in. He swallowed. “I’m $600 short,” he said after a moment. He looked absolutely terrified to even hope. “The semester starts in a week. I have a couple scholarships, some loans...but it still wasn’t enough.”

Erik nodded. He was putting Lorna through college, after all; he knew how expensive college was these days. So much more expensive than when he’d gone. “Can I see more examples of your work?” he asked. 

Charles blinked at him. He hesitantly stood up and took a couple steps towards Erik. Erik thought he was heading for the laptop next to him on the desk, and Erik’s head was turned to look at the laptop, which is why he didn’t notice that Charles was climbing over the chair back and into his lap until the boy was there. Charles immediately put his hand on Erik’s cock and his lips on Erik’s neck. 

Erik jerked back. _”Don’t!”_ he snapped. He put his hands on the boy’s torso, under his armpits, and bodily lifted him off. He weighed probably half of what Erik did. 

“You know that’s sexual assault, right?” Erik said, pacing. “I made it more than clear that we would not be fucking!”

Charles shrank back. “I thought—but you said—”

“I wanted to see your work, as in more of your photo editing work, graphic work, whatever you have,” Erik said, rolling his eyes. “Not sex work.”

Charles swallowed. “But you’re so handsome,” he whispered. “And kind. And I want to—”

“I’m twice your age,” Erik said, in disbelief. “And I’m not interested in fucking children.”

“I’m not a child!” Charles yelled.   
Erik put his face in his hands, despite the fact that his hands were covered in pizza grease. “Okay, yes, you aren’t. I’m sorry. But I’m not attracted to you—not that way. I’m just not wired that way, do you understand?”

Charles was visibly trembling. He looked at Erik with wide eyes brimming with tears and didn’t respond. 

“I feel very strongly—” Erik stopped, because it was hard to articulate the feeling that this boy brought out in him. “I just want you safe, okay? I asked if I could see more of your work because if you are as talented with Photoshop as I think you could be, I could justify hiring you and offer you a living wage and a flexible schedule. Something that would let you go to college, too.”

Charles mouth opened but no words came out. 

“I’m the director of marketing for this motel chain,” Erik said quickly, as if, if he spoke fast enough, he could prevent Charles from crying. “I could create a position for you.”

The tears that had been just barely clinging to Charles’ eyes started pouring out. “But—why?” he managed to choke out. 

Erik’s heart felt like it was being pulled from his chest, seeing Charles cry like this. Despite the part of his brain that told him it wasn’t a good idea, he walked over to Charles and put his arms around him. “I don’t know,” he whispered to the boy’s hair. “I just care about you. I want the best for you.”

Charles sobbed in his arms for a few minutes. When his sobs slowed down, Erik released him and went to the bathroom to get the boy a tissue. 

“It’s just—you’re too good to be true,” Charles said. “I think meeting you is the best thing that could have possibly happened to me tonight.”

Charles gave him a tremulous smile, and Erik had to blink away his own tears as he had a flash of something that he was certain someone else would call a vision. He saw Charles, apple-cheeked and laughing, at a healthy weight, sitting around a table with himself and Lorna and Wanda. The remains of a Thanksgiving feast were around the four of them and they all were playing pinochle, as Erik and his girls did every Thanksgiving. 

“What I can’t believe,” Erik said slowly, “is how someone I met just an hour ago could instantly become so important to me.” Although as he said it, he realized he could think of two other people in his life who had instantly become so important to him. 

“Maybe we knew each other in another life,” Charles said, his tears gone, and a huge smile on his face. He added cheekily, “I bet we fucked in that life.”

“No means no, buddy,” Erik said mock-sternly. “Now, where on the internet can I see more of your work with Photoshop?”

**Author's Note:**

> Different, right? :)


End file.
